List Price: $149.99
Sale Price: $137.99
Today's Bonus: 8% Off
When I saw this heater at the store a couple of years ago, I loved the idea of it. But when I went home and looked at our setup, I saw no space between the umbrella pole and the hole in the table to fit the cord, so I let it go. Then I recently received this as a gift. I was concerned about how I'd hook it up, but it was worth trying since we have some chilly evenings where we like to still sit outside. It was QUITE an adventure to get it set up. Our umbrella pole is a full 2" diameter....the max you can have with this heater. And the cord is t-h-i-c-k. It wouldn't fit in the tiny space left as the pole went thru the table hole so I had to rout out a groove in the wood umbrella pole so it would have a place to rest and not be pinched. Then there was the rest of the cord issues. The cord is only about 8-9' long and the instructions say to not use this with an extension cord. OK----good luck with that. Unless you have an outlet right under your table, that's not gonna happen. The the bigger issue at hand was the plug on the end of the cord. It's HUGE. So big, it would not fit thru the hole in our patio table. There's nothing unusual about our patio table. The hole looks completely standard, but this plug with it's GFI Test buttons and all would not fit through. So we started to dismantle it. In the end, we had to remove the wiring from the cord completely, then slip the cord thru the hole, then rewire it. So as not to have a 14G extension cord running along our deck, we wired it directly with 120 standard home wire underneath the deck, then connected the big plug at the other end right by the outlet. You wouldn't have to do that, but we did since we had the cord apart anyway. All's well right? It lights up....it heats....it has good ambiance....and then we had a rain storm. The heater is under the umbrella, but with heavy rain that umbrella will start to leak water. I wonder if the heater is waterproof??? NOOOOOOOOOO. The instructions clearly say that it cannot get wet. Water can't drip into the heater blades or the center motor. What the? This is supposed to be for the outdoors!! And now that our heater is unremovable from the umbrella cuz we'd have to dismantle the big plug again, we can't just take it in the house. For the immediate storm, I covered each blade with plastic bags, but the center motor was still exposed. For the long run, I sewed up a permanent cover for the heater out of some old patio cover fabric I had from another project. But you would think this would have been designed to take a little moisture without issue. Big design flaw in my opinion which is why I gave it 4 stars instead of 5. I otherwise love the heater in operation and the soft light is nice at night.
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